Increasingly, enterprises are deploying Self-Service Terminals (SSTs) at various locations for use by consumers. The locations can include financial institutions, grocery stores, retail stores, government venues, entertainment venues, gaming venues, transportation venues, and the like.
The SSTs save the enterprises money by reducing onsite support staff and increasing the operational throughput by servicing consumers more efficiently.
However, the SSTs are electromechanical devices that include a variety of hardware and software modules, which do fail on occasion requiring onsite service. Moreover, the SSTs can, from time-to-time, require new modules, updated modules, or require that some modules been removed from the SSTs. Thus, a support staff of service engineers/technicians must be maintained by the enterprises.
Moreover, some SSTs lack any network connection, such that remote monitoring and management becomes problematic, such as a typical vending machine. While other SSTs have very restrictive and secure network connections due to the very nature of the business associated with these SSTs, such as an Automated Teller Machine (ATM). For example, ATM networks may be owned and operated by one company for security reasons while a different company manages and services the ATM. This means that the servicing company for the ATM has limited and in some cases no access to the ATM's network for supporting the ATM.
Thus, remote network monitoring and maintenance of some SSTs is problematic for an enterprise. Moreover, even when an enterprise relies on its service engineers in the field to report back issues (however insignificant), the information for those issues is often: incomplete, misleading, or in some cases even completely missing (a service engineer neglects to report the information). So, monitoring and managing a particular SST is inefficient and obtaining a system wide perspective on all SSTs serviced by the enterprise becomes a next to impossible feat.